


Rocks And A Thousand Years Gone By

by leiascully



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Community: dogdaysofsummer, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-07
Updated: 2005-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That is not Light Reading."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rocks And A Thousand Years Gone By

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Marauders - PoA  
> A/N: Ah, youth. Somewhat inspired by Shoebox Project, I imagine.  
> Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ and all related characters are the property of JK Rowling and Scholastic. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The hot flat glare of the sun off the sand brought out the whiskey light in Remus' eyes. Sirius stood over him, hands on narrow hips nearly unseating his trunks, and squinted into the shade cast by Remus' umbrella, which seemed not so much to create shade as to catch the reflected light in the ribbed bowl of the underside and diffuse it about Remus to provide the optimal reading environment. Sirius wondered if this was some tricky bit of magic or just the way that the universe seemed to feel that Remus, eternally tragic, should have good things in his life here and there as long as he couldn't possibly control or dictate them.

Sirius liked to think that he was one of the good bits, utterly unexpected, but somewhere in his head a small haughty voice whispered that blood traitors never brought real joy to anyone.

"Remus," he said to dispel the voice. "Moony. You can't spend the whole of summer hols mooning over that book. 'S practically a tome, mate. That is not Light Reading." Through the haze of his lashes it looked as if Remus were glowing.

Remus didn't even look up. "I believe that precedent would show that you're wrong about that, Padfoot. The book-mooning, that is, not the heft of the book. I was wasting all of my summer hols on literature long before I met you."

"I will build a sandcastle on top of you," said Sirius decisively, hitching his trunks up in a futile effort. "And I will put small crabs in your ears. And then I will take your massive book and feed it to a lobster, perhaps. Or a whelk."

"Neither of those things eat books," murmured Remus, engrossed in the page. He looked up at Sirius for a moment with those intoxicating eyes, and his hair was almost a halo around his head where the salt made it spiky. Sirius who hated art wished for a paintbrush and artist's hands, knobbled with paint rimed under short nails. His idle aristocrat's hands were only clever with spells and caresses; he could touch Remus' skin, but not his heart.

"That is not the point. The point is that you will be covered in sand and you will be Without Book and then you will have to pay attention to me, which is why I have connived to bring you to this beach in the first place while Peter and James are sleeping it off." The wind dragged a cloud across the sun for a moment and Sirius could look at Remus without squinting. Remus the immovable, Remus with book at moment of inertia. Still life: Werewolf with Literature. There was nothing to be done.

Sirius sighed and flung himself down into the sand next to Remus' blanket, feeling the heat from the sand gather under the hollows of his cheekbones. He rolled himself in the sand, the gritty particulate glitter of it very white against the tan of his skin. Remus was dusted with sand here and there, but it barely showed, just a shimmer under his shoulder blade and across the ribs that could have been a scar or could have been sweat. Sirius knew where the scars were: he traced the ridged lines that cast thin shadows along Remus' spine and put his palm to the invisible knots of tissue where the skin had healed over properly but underneath lay startling patterns like the strange constellations of memory. Remus lay quiet under his hand, dreamy eyes unfocused.

"Sirius," he said suddenly and rolled so that Sirius' fingers lay in the valleys between his ribs. "Did you know, I think I love you?"

All at once, Sirius was not sure that his eyes didn't take up half of his face: he could feel them widening and widening and yet all he could see was Remus' own eyes that were the colour of honey being stirred slowly into good whiskey. "Oh?" he managed to say after a moment.

"Yes," said Remus thoughtfully. "I think that must be it. Because when you touch me, you see, I find I can't think of Literature anymore. And when you confide that you've connived to get me alone, I begin to think that I wouldn't mind abandoning the book entirely for a while, even though you made my blanket smell of wet dog this morning when you trompled all over it trying to get my attention. I find myself horribly distracted by your haphazard trunks and the fact that you've got sand in your eyebrows somehow." He reached out with one sunscreen-scented hand and smoothed his thumb over Sirius' brow. Sirius closed his eyes.

"If we ever live together," said the unseen Remus, his cool palm cupped over Sirius' haughty cheekbone, "let it be by a beach. And you can be Padfoot now and then and I shall throw sticks for you and praise all the disgusting things you bring back, and you will no doubt track sand into bed with us in whatever form and I will be forced to think of a brilliant charm to keep it out of the sheets. Most unpleasant scratching sensations otherwise."

"Will we be happy?" asked Sirius, fighting a prickle in his eyes that had nothing to do with sand and everything to do with salt water. "Despite everything? Despite the war that's coming?" A breath of air puffed against his delicate eyelids and then Remus was kissing him, all salty boy lips and the porcelain click of teeth against teeth.

"Of course we will be happy," said Remus after a few moments in his light voice that was like a spell, a little breathless. "Love conquers all. I have read it in Literature. And you, Sirius Black, what have you ever done in your life that didn't turn out perfectly?"

Years later, in Azkaban, Sirius listened to the crash of waves against the stern rock of the shore and thought that blood traitors never brought real joy to anyone, that he had always been the sand in Remus' bed. The broken promise of love had not brought sticks on the beach, and if he ever saw Remus again, the disgusting thing he brought back would be himself. There was a little grit in the corner of his cell where the rock had been worn away by some other raving madman, and Sirius patted his fingertips in it and rubbed them against his rough cheek. He dreamed of white sand and the heat of youth.


End file.
